It's nice to have connections. I got to go in a balloon ride over the Serengeti.
Granted, it was *very* early in the morning
But no matter. Still freakin awesome.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Balloons.
It's nice to have connections. I got to go in a balloon ride over the Serengeti.
Granted, it was *very* early in the morning
But no matter. Still freakin awesome.
"Oh Dear GOD, We are going to DIE." Part II.
“Oh Dear God, we are going to DIE” Part II
I have been convinced of this fact many times during my short stay in the Serengeti. Whether it was upon being startled awake in my tent by the sound of nearby lion roars, or attempting to cross the yawning abyss of the Ngare Nanyuki river in our 1980’s era landrover, my brain fights a turbulent battle against my sympathetic nervous system. Intellectually I know we are not going to die. In the Serengeti at least, lions do not break into tents, even though they are kind of like twinkies, a plastic yellow shell with soft human marshmallow stuffing. And the Ngare Nanyuki, even though I cannot see the ground below me as we drive forward, has been crossed many times before. Norbert laughs at me sometimes, “Ali,” he says, “Do you really think we are going to die? To die is hard work.”
Today though, as I sit frozen, staring at the smooth cement in front of our bathroom door, my brain knows that one wrong move, and someone actually could die. The texts and calls roll in. “GET OUT. Go to Cheetah House if you have to. GET OUT of the house!” Writes Laura. “Close the door with a pole and break the window so it can escape.” Writes Anna. I talk to Megan on the phone. “I don’t want to leave,” I say, “because then I don’t know if it has really left.” She agrees. It is either a Cobra or a Black Mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, and it is hiding in our house.
I liked snakes when I was a kid. I still do, actually. I think I have my mom to thank for my strange affection towards these scaly, slithering creatures. Unlike many moms, she had no fear of them, often rescuing them from the middle of the road where they had ill-advisedly decided to sun. We had a 6-foot long garter snake in our backyard for many years, and tried to catch him and tame him on many occasions. He always broke out of the terrarium and slithered off into the oaks and maples and poison ivy. My only mishap was when a tiny baby green snake bit in the soft tender tissue between my pudgy child fingers. Even the rattlesnakes I’ve almost stepped just curl up into themselves and give a halfhearted warning and watch me leave. Unlike spiders, which give me this involuntary, visceral shudder – what a friend calls the spinal heebie-jeebies – snakes spike my curiosity. Somewhere there is a picture of me, as a toddler, in Bali or some other exotic location, with a 12-foot boa constrictor curling around my mother and me. I like snakes.
Until now. In Tanzania, poisonous snakes are the rule rather than the exception. And the poison here makes rattlers and copperheads look like as mild as a paper cut in comparison. I did not know this until speaking to a friend who had grown up in the bush. Making conversation, I once asked her what animal I should worry about the most, as I go about my days in Serengeti. I expected her to say buffalo or elephants – both of these are ubiquitous, aggressive, and unpredictable. I am more likely to run into a buffalo or elephant than a hippo, which kills more people than any other mammal; and these are more likely to attack in daylight than a lion. But without hesitation, she blurts out “Snakes. Black Mambas.” There is no question in her mind. Walking off paths is dangerous because you cannot see what reptilian bringer of death might be lurking underfoot. Apparently, so is walking around in your house.
The snake in our house is easily 6 feet long, a deep charcoal gray. It is almost certainly a black mamba. I was catching up on updating some lion photos on the computer, singing along to Josh Ritter, with my back to front door. George and Norbert were coming home soon, and leftovers were warming on the stove. The strange swishing noise took some time to sink in. It wasn’t a coming car, and it wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t any part of the normal animal chorus that plays outside our house. Finally, I stand and turn to investigate and catch the thick gray shimmer of a snake undulating across our cold cement floor. There is no visceral shudder that shakes me, just the cold, knife-like stabbing fear. If a black mamba bites you, you will be dead in less than an hour. I am no more than 10 feet away from one of the most dangerous animals that I will ever encounter. I hold my breath and watch it slither into the bathroom, and then I make the calls to those who have been here for many more years than I. I close all the other doors in the house, and then climb up onto the table, off the ground, and watch the smooth, empty cement in front of our bathroom door. I am still waiting. 30 minutes. 45 minutes. 60 minutes. George and Norbert promise they are coming, that they will bring our next-door neighbor JumaPili to help. Yet over an hour later, they still do not show up, do not call. It is one of those many moments that I am more than a little annoyed with the lackadaisicality of Tanzanian culture. 30 minutes. 45 minutes. 60 minutes. It is now 3pm. The malaria retrovirals are making me dizzy and I want to curl up in bed, but I’m not sure where this snake is. Eventually the men show, armed with kerosene and a long pincher-pole. The splash the gas in the hole that runs beneath the bathtub, where the snake is almost certainly curled up. Eventually it will tire of the smell and leave. So they say.
So life goes back to normal, more or less. George starts to wash vegetables in the kitchen, I return to staring at the computer screen. Craig calls to talk about permits. “Oh, the snake,” he says. “It’s probably just a spitting cobra – not that poisonous, really. If you catch it in the face, just wash it out. You’ll go blind for about 12 hours, but nothing permanent. Least of your worries. Now, can you please send the data for…” he goes on to talk about permits and data analysis. I am only half listening, and with the corner of my eyes I am watching the cold, smooth cement outside our bathroom door, smelling the antiseptic aroma of kerosene.
Least of my worries? I can think of a million things that I am less worried about than the spitting cobra hiding beneath our bathtub. But okay, I am not going to die today. Which is good, because I have way too much work to do.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Driving.
“Oh Dear God, We are Going to DIE.”
I remember that phrase on constant repeat in my head during my unprepared and ill-advised ascent of the Polish Tatras. I had decided to climb a mountain in late May with little more than a t-shirt and ultralight rain jacket – the kind that costs an arm and a leg because it weighs no more than a paper clip and fits in a tea-cup - a coarse park map and no compass. Just as I was convinced of my imminent demise then, I am now. “Oh God, we are going to die.” I mutter it under my breath to myself as the ancient Landrover steering wheel ricochets between my hands. We are on the long road from Arusha to Serengeti, and I am convinced that at any moment the wind will blow us straight off of the fresh tarmac. Even on the best road in the district, the landy pulls and sways, as though yearning for the ditch along the road, and I constantly remind myself to breathe as I focus hard on staying straight. Daladalas stuffed with passengers pass by effortlessly but I am scared to turn my head lest I lose my tenuous grip on our straight path forward.
It is June 22, 2010. Today I am 27 years old, crossing that bridge from “mid-20’s” to “late-20’s,” and while I joke about how my bones creak and short-term memory is fading, I am still too young to die. Meshack laughs quietly beside me – he is our prized fundi, our expert mechanic, and is making the long trek to Serengeti for no other reason than to make sure that I (and the car) make it there in one piece. “Tuende!” he says, motioning forward. Let’s go. I gulp loudly and clench the wheel tighter. There really is no respite from the terror – on the open tarmac I have to go 
faster; as we slow for villages there are pedestrians and bicyclists, peddlers and Maasai and livestock that weave alongside the road erratically, and I am convinced that at any moment one of them will meander into the path of my Monster Truck. Winding up the gnarled and pockmarked Crater road are blind turns and oncoming trucks that only further the terror of the already perilous ascent. I am torn between the urgent need to reach the park gates before they close, and my desire to remain alive and in more or less one piece. When we stop at the Crater rim (in part for Patriki to take a picture, in part for me to try and restart my heart), Meshack glances at his watch nervously. Ever so gently, he offers, “Maybe it would be faster if I drive?”
I almost kissed him. The passenger seat in a Landrover has never felt quite so luxurious – before or since – though I still question my lifespan on a daily basis from the driver seat. For example, George, my coworker on the Lion Project, has been teaching me to drive offroad. “It is just fine,” he assures me as we begin to climb the veritable of dusty soil and clumpy vegetation. Except when it is not fine. As we circle and spin and weave through aardvark hole-ridden hilltops, I can see him clutch the window frame suddenly in panic, his foot involuntarily slamming down where the break pedal should be. The landrover falls into the abyss where ground once was. Ka-thunk. I hold my breath and resist the visceral urge to slam on the accelerator and clear away from the danger as fast as I can. The landy keeps chugging forward, powered by the magic that is low-range. The rear tire plummets to the depths of hell and haltingly crawls back out. We are alive. Barely. George laughs. “Avoid that green grass!” he reminds me. I am lost – it’s all green. “That’s green!” I point, “and that! And that over there!” It is all green and it all looks the same, but George sees some magical difference. I’m told that in time I will see it too. In the meanwhile, however, I maintain my running commentary. “OH dear GOD, we are going to die!...oh, okay, we’re okay. OH GOD that’s a hole! Oh, okay, we are alive. That’s just grass.” Except when it’s not.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Pink House
The Pink House is the Savannas Forever fortress near Arusha's gated neighborhood. It sees a constant flow of SF employees and affiliates, lion researchers or grad students stopping on their way in or out of Serengeti. It is like a pink stucco fortress next to a village that has burros tied to their bus stop. ( seriously. We think it is a backup plan in case the daladala doesn't come.)
After inner-city Arusha excursions and watching world cup soccer eating homemade chips mayai, we head to Serengeti for months of dirt and dust and the most breathtaking wildlife in the world.
But we will miss our Pink House Friends.
After inner-city Arusha excursions and watching world cup soccer eating homemade chips mayai, we head to Serengeti for months of dirt and dust and the most breathtaking wildlife in the world.
But we will miss our Pink House Friends.
June 18 2010
Even as I walk, it is a struggle to keep my eyes open. I am going on 40 hours without sleep, the world taking on that hazy, throbbing, sleep-deprived glare, the lights are harsh and do not want to focus. I had such grand plans for my 3.5 hours in Amsterdam, but all I want to do is curl up into a ball and sleep.
As soon as I step into the bathroom, a familiar wave of “underwhelm” floods over me. The stalls are floor-to-ceiling plastic laminate, off-white with speckled blue. The toilets feel plastic and cheap; there are no vertical tanks and the water flows weakly into the bowl upon flushing – seemingly impotent in comparison to our noisy, torrential, tornado-like toilets. There is only a short, narrow mirror offset from the two plain ceramic sinks. Even the shadiest Taco Bells in the US have snazzier toilets than the Amsterdam airport, and I begin to wonder if Americans just love their bathrooms. Our bathrooms have colorful tile and big, well-lit mirrors; shiny metal stalls that create an air of spaciousness with their open tops and bottoms. Did you know that you can buy dual aquarium/toilet-tanks? The CBS featured “Fish’n’Flush” is just one of a whole line of home improvement products that lets you blend your bathroom time with some quality pet-bonding. You can watch little Nemo swim around while you heed nature’s call. The “Fish’n’Flush” page boasts that this is what you need if you are a homeowner that wants to make a statement. On the same page is an ad for helping the world’s poorest of poor. We like our bathrooms, apparently.
Amsterdam is simply not as shiny as I feel it should be. It is like my dingy, graying MacBook – dulled in the splendor of the shiny new metallic models – exuding an aura of aging technology. The strange dissonant drabness lingers as I walk around. I stare in bleary-eyed amusement at a woman in fitted pants and high heels, and a gentleman in a gray blazer – his hair spiked into a faux-hawk, the product crispy and shiny – they walk with authoritative strides, collecting stray trash with their bare hands. I’ve never seen such a well-dressed custodial couple. Everywhere there is cleaning. Motorizing and cleaning. They love their motorized carts here – there are carts of every kind – passenger carts with back-to back benches, driven by well-postured flight attendants in crisp blue skirt-suits with bright white trim - that swerve frenetically around rolling luggage and dawdling travelers. Police on gimmicky segways that whirr weakly through the crowds. There are standing carts and sitting carts; blue carts and green carts; carts with metal boxes on the backs; carts dragging wheelchairs; carts - little orange carts – with brushy floor cleaners that spray and scrub the dull tan-gray tiles. Everywhere there is endless cleaning and motorizing.
With my overweight bags stacked on a little pushcart, I meander through the branching hallways. The light drizzles down through a slatted ceiling that looks like someone’s unwanted venetian blinds. Venetian blinds – how I hated them as a child. They were on all of our windows and there was nothing I wanted more than fluffy, billowing curtains or a satin window shag - something to soften the harsh angularity of the vinyl strips and the sharp corners of the window frames. Here in the airport halls, these ceiling slats dull the florescent light, and it fall flat on the drab décor. The floor is a 70’s era gray-brown, the walls alternately paneled peach wallpaper, frosted windows, or tiny coral-colored tiles.
It is almost 11 months to the day that I was here before, lost and scared, an untried mzungu embarking on my first real academic expedition. I am back now, admiring the cheese and chocolate, the well-dressed herds of flight attendants, shopping clerks, and snappy passerby(s?). I am excited and ready for anything, although desperate for orange juice and a nap. I curl up on the sofa near the unending “waterspa” that whirs and buzzes and opens and closes – a massage bed topped with some sort of super snazzy water-massage device that the lonelyattendant runs again and again and again. People walk without pausing, turning their heads as they pass to stare curiously, but they do not stop. So the spa goes on whirring and buzzing and opening and closing, and all around the little motorized carts – blue and green and orange, stand-up or sit-down style – go puttering by. In the gray, muted lights I curl up on top of my luggage, piled beside me on the bench, and close my eyes to this electric lullaby.
As soon as I step into the bathroom, a familiar wave of “underwhelm” floods over me. The stalls are floor-to-ceiling plastic laminate, off-white with speckled blue. The toilets feel plastic and cheap; there are no vertical tanks and the water flows weakly into the bowl upon flushing – seemingly impotent in comparison to our noisy, torrential, tornado-like toilets. There is only a short, narrow mirror offset from the two plain ceramic sinks. Even the shadiest Taco Bells in the US have snazzier toilets than the Amsterdam airport, and I begin to wonder if Americans just love their bathrooms. Our bathrooms have colorful tile and big, well-lit mirrors; shiny metal stalls that create an air of spaciousness with their open tops and bottoms. Did you know that you can buy dual aquarium/toilet-tanks? The CBS featured “Fish’n’Flush” is just one of a whole line of home improvement products that lets you blend your bathroom time with some quality pet-bonding. You can watch little Nemo swim around while you heed nature’s call. The “Fish’n’Flush” page boasts that this is what you need if you are a homeowner that wants to make a statement. On the same page is an ad for helping the world’s poorest of poor. We like our bathrooms, apparently.
Amsterdam is simply not as shiny as I feel it should be. It is like my dingy, graying MacBook – dulled in the splendor of the shiny new metallic models – exuding an aura of aging technology. The strange dissonant drabness lingers as I walk around. I stare in bleary-eyed amusement at a woman in fitted pants and high heels, and a gentleman in a gray blazer – his hair spiked into a faux-hawk, the product crispy and shiny – they walk with authoritative strides, collecting stray trash with their bare hands. I’ve never seen such a well-dressed custodial couple. Everywhere there is cleaning. Motorizing and cleaning. They love their motorized carts here – there are carts of every kind – passenger carts with back-to back benches, driven by well-postured flight attendants in crisp blue skirt-suits with bright white trim - that swerve frenetically around rolling luggage and dawdling travelers. Police on gimmicky segways that whirr weakly through the crowds. There are standing carts and sitting carts; blue carts and green carts; carts with metal boxes on the backs; carts dragging wheelchairs; carts - little orange carts – with brushy floor cleaners that spray and scrub the dull tan-gray tiles. Everywhere there is endless cleaning and motorizing.
With my overweight bags stacked on a little pushcart, I meander through the branching hallways. The light drizzles down through a slatted ceiling that looks like someone’s unwanted venetian blinds. Venetian blinds – how I hated them as a child. They were on all of our windows and there was nothing I wanted more than fluffy, billowing curtains or a satin window shag - something to soften the harsh angularity of the vinyl strips and the sharp corners of the window frames. Here in the airport halls, these ceiling slats dull the florescent light, and it fall flat on the drab décor. The floor is a 70’s era gray-brown, the walls alternately paneled peach wallpaper, frosted windows, or tiny coral-colored tiles.
It is almost 11 months to the day that I was here before, lost and scared, an untried mzungu embarking on my first real academic expedition. I am back now, admiring the cheese and chocolate, the well-dressed herds of flight attendants, shopping clerks, and snappy passerby(s?). I am excited and ready for anything, although desperate for orange juice and a nap. I curl up on the sofa near the unending “waterspa” that whirs and buzzes and opens and closes – a massage bed topped with some sort of super snazzy water-massage device that the lonelyattendant runs again and again and again. People walk without pausing, turning their heads as they pass to stare curiously, but they do not stop. So the spa goes on whirring and buzzing and opening and closing, and all around the little motorized carts – blue and green and orange, stand-up or sit-down style – go puttering by. In the gray, muted lights I curl up on top of my luggage, piled beside me on the bench, and close my eyes to this electric lullaby.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Take 2: Return to Serengeti
17 June 2010
To be honest, I don’t actually know what the date is. We are between time: moving forward, skipping beats. Leaping ahead 14 hours when we really should only saunter 6. We are somewhere between today and tomorrow, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it to come.
Almost 11 months to the day, I am once again heading into the future. I remember how new and fresh these moments were 11 months ago. I was an untried mzungu waltzing into the bush, some white chick from the American Dream suburbs, raised on lattes and cul-de-sac kickball, and almost reluctant to admit that I thought I might be able to say something insightful about lion-hyena-leopard interactions. But this time I am confident and cool…I am proud of what I have done so far and excited for what is to come. I have a study design that blends novel concepts with a cutting edge empirical pursuit. I have camped out surrounded by hyenas, I have tracked lions and been charged by elephants. I have my name in Smithsonian. I have more than a snazzy-sounding elevator-clip of my research to back up my plans. And, perhaps most importantly, I have money. Not only did I score a sweet fellowship, but I raised $24,000 in grants for the season - for even in academia, money makes the world go round. For the first time since graduate school began, I feel like I just might be able to pull this thing off.
Chasing day across the Atlantic, I am stunned by how different this flight is from my last. It feels small and cramped, and though the plane sits 8 across, we are all entranced in our own worlds – instead of appearing in the aisles, where we all feel guilty for blatantly ignoring the jaded attendants, the safety talk is given on our personal seatback tv’s, by a redhead with a little button nose and unusually prominent cheekbones. I remember her from my last international flight, with her weird wagging finger when she reminds us severely not to smoke.
My traveling companion has not said a word to me, though he gets “special meals” which means that they come 40 minutes before mine and waft alluringly while I wait, half-hungry and half-asleep, for my box meal and cup of wine. I waver in and out of sleep, still in stunned disbelief that I am really going back.
In just a few days, I will be driving out to the Serengeti, armed with nearly 200 digital camera traps (DIGITAL!!!) and 5 months of bug spray. This time, when people inquire what I am doing for my project, I will tell them rather than ask. I am still studying the mechanisms driving carnivore coexistence, but now I know how I am doing it and what the ultimate picture will be. I am using camera traps to collect empirical data on spatial and temporal patterns of carnivore habitat use with respect to their competitors – and I will assess spatiotemporal partitioning as a mechanism of coexistence. But it doesn’t stop there. There are a million mechanisms postulated for species coexistence, but few, if any, have been tested in systems like mine. So I will test for interference-exploitation trade-offs, I will look for costs incurred by one competitor on another, I will find the R* of a lion…All of this I will do by analyzing images from these cameras for the next 2 years. But right now I will sleep. Tomorrow is coming, but it is not here yet, and I will revel in today while it lasts…even if all it means is my little seatback TV and boxed meal on a plane.
To be honest, I don’t actually know what the date is. We are between time: moving forward, skipping beats. Leaping ahead 14 hours when we really should only saunter 6. We are somewhere between today and tomorrow, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it to come.
Almost 11 months to the day, I am once again heading into the future. I remember how new and fresh these moments were 11 months ago. I was an untried mzungu waltzing into the bush, some white chick from the American Dream suburbs, raised on lattes and cul-de-sac kickball, and almost reluctant to admit that I thought I might be able to say something insightful about lion-hyena-leopard interactions. But this time I am confident and cool…I am proud of what I have done so far and excited for what is to come. I have a study design that blends novel concepts with a cutting edge empirical pursuit. I have camped out surrounded by hyenas, I have tracked lions and been charged by elephants. I have my name in Smithsonian. I have more than a snazzy-sounding elevator-clip of my research to back up my plans. And, perhaps most importantly, I have money. Not only did I score a sweet fellowship, but I raised $24,000 in grants for the season - for even in academia, money makes the world go round. For the first time since graduate school began, I feel like I just might be able to pull this thing off.
Chasing day across the Atlantic, I am stunned by how different this flight is from my last. It feels small and cramped, and though the plane sits 8 across, we are all entranced in our own worlds – instead of appearing in the aisles, where we all feel guilty for blatantly ignoring the jaded attendants, the safety talk is given on our personal seatback tv’s, by a redhead with a little button nose and unusually prominent cheekbones. I remember her from my last international flight, with her weird wagging finger when she reminds us severely not to smoke.
My traveling companion has not said a word to me, though he gets “special meals” which means that they come 40 minutes before mine and waft alluringly while I wait, half-hungry and half-asleep, for my box meal and cup of wine. I waver in and out of sleep, still in stunned disbelief that I am really going back.
In just a few days, I will be driving out to the Serengeti, armed with nearly 200 digital camera traps (DIGITAL!!!) and 5 months of bug spray. This time, when people inquire what I am doing for my project, I will tell them rather than ask. I am still studying the mechanisms driving carnivore coexistence, but now I know how I am doing it and what the ultimate picture will be. I am using camera traps to collect empirical data on spatial and temporal patterns of carnivore habitat use with respect to their competitors – and I will assess spatiotemporal partitioning as a mechanism of coexistence. But it doesn’t stop there. There are a million mechanisms postulated for species coexistence, but few, if any, have been tested in systems like mine. So I will test for interference-exploitation trade-offs, I will look for costs incurred by one competitor on another, I will find the R* of a lion…All of this I will do by analyzing images from these cameras for the next 2 years. But right now I will sleep. Tomorrow is coming, but it is not here yet, and I will revel in today while it lasts…even if all it means is my little seatback TV and boxed meal on a plane.
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